In the Wadi 'Amd this family remained, and gathered in their hands and guarded through many vicissitudes all civilisation that the valley contained. Just so, in the Dark Ages of Europe, the lamp of learning was fed--a feeble flicker, yet sufficient to light a greater flame when the general illumination of the Renaissance ushered in the modern world.
How many obscure heroisms, what invincible patience and hope must have gone to carry through those blood stained ages the the mild treasure of wisdom!
Psychologists tell us that the impulse of sex is the fundamental mover of this world, and we are perhaps getting a little tired of hearing it so often. But there are two impulses stronger than desire, deeper than love of man or woman, and independent of it--the human hunger for truth and liberty. For these two greater sacrifices are made than for any love of person; against them nothing can prevail, since love and life itself have proved themselves light in the balance; and the creature man is ever ready to refute the Matter-of-fact Realist and his statistics by sacrificing all he has for some abstract idea of wisdom or freedom, unprofitable in every mercenary scale.
What with popular lecture, compulsory instruction and the belief that one is educated if one can read and write, we sometimes forget that this hunger of our soul exists: but in the Wadi 'Amd it is difficult to satisfy, adn therefore more easily recognised for what it is, ...
Quotation: The Southern Gates of Arabia by Freya Stark, 1936.
